"Lady Margaret" is a thoroughly condensed American version of the much longer British ballad "Fair Margaret and Sweet William" (Child #74). It is also known as "Lady Margaret and Sweet William", "Pretty Polly and Sweet William", "Sweet William's Bride", "Lady Margaret's Ghost", "Fair Margaret's Misfortune" and "William and Margaret". Thomas Percy included it in his Reliques of Ancient Poetry and said that it was quoted as early as 1611 in Beaumont's Knight of the Burning Pestle. This is a good example of how songs passing through the oral transmission process sometimes get altered, usually by omitting nonessential details, until they are distilled into, sometimes, very dramatic versions. Here almost all of the details of William's courtships of both Lady Margaret and his "new made bride" are omitted and only the dramatic kernel of the ghost story remains. It was recorded by A.L. Lloyd and Ewan MacColl on The English and Scottish Popular Ballads Volume II (1956), Pete Seeger on American Ballads and We Shall Overcome: The Complete Carnegie Hall Recording, Hedy West on Hedy West Volume 2, Almeda Riddle on Ballads and Hymns from the Ozarks and others. I learned it from Bascomb Lamar Lunsford via Pete Seeger.